Fadeaway's FantasybaseballLeague official b**** about people who havent picked thread

And now, a word about my star outfielder:

Dunn's deal: he's the real deal


SARASOTA, Fla. -- Predicting the future is a messy line of work, unless you're employed by the National Enquirer. So we'll be the first to say we don't know quite what the world will look like in 10 years, except that it will have even more cable channels.


But we do know this about what we'll find in the year 2012:


If a man named Adam Dunn isn't making more home run trots than any other human on earth, we can't wait to see the guy who out-trots him..


"People just don't hit the ball that hard," says his GM, the Reds' Jim Bowden.


"The one thing I know about Adam Dunn," says Tigers pitcher Steve Sparks, "is, he's got a LOUUUUDDDD bat."


"He might be like Bugs Bunny one day," says teammate Jose Rijo. "He might hit a ball and break it in half."


We could go on like this for about an hour. But you get the picture.


You will run across very few baseball players who have the kind of buzz following them around -- at age 22, after just two months in the big leagues -- that Adam Dunn has.


But then, who's the last 22-year-old coming off a 51-homer season (12 in 39 games in Double-A, 20 in 55 games in Triple-A, 19 in 66 games in the major leagues)?


Well, we'll tell you who. The last known player to hit 50 home runs in any professional season at a younger age than Dunn was the not-so-legendary Calvin Felix -- in 1947. And he did it, according to SABR home run historian Bob McConnell, for the Las Vegas Wranglers, of the late, great Class C Sunset League. Felix was 21 that year, with a birthday four days earlier than Dunn's.


Obviously, Calvin Felix never did turn into Babe Ruth. He never even turned into Junior Felix, for that matter. But Adam Dunn's rampage was slightly more high-profile -- because he divided his home runs among the three highest levels of the game, three levels that separate the real deals from the Calvin Felixes.

In fact, according to McConnell, Dunn last year became the first player ever to hit 10 or more homers at two different minor-league levels and in the big leagues in the same season. So we're hereby acclaiming those 51 home runs to be 100 percent approved as legitimate.

We'll even sanction the two more he hit in the Triple-A All-Star game and one more in the Futures Game. Which makes 54 homers in one year. Phew.


So no wonder there's that buzz every time Dunn heads for the plate, every time his name comes up, every time he even takes BP. Nobody doubts that last year, for this guy, was just the beginning.


"The thing is that, unfortunately, we look at him like he's a 10-year veteran," Bowden says. "We look at him like he's already a great player, and he'll just keep getting better. I remember Dave Parker when he was young in the Pittsburgh organization, where it wasn't a matter of, 'he was young.' It was just a matter of, 'he was going to do it.' That's how we feel about Adam.


"These are guys you don't see very often. They come along once every 25 years. Very few guys come up and you look at them, after one year in the big leagues, and say they're going to hit 40 or 50 or 60 home runs. But you do with Adam."


Reds manager Bob Boone routinely compares Dunn with the great bashers of our era -- with McGwire, with Sosa, with Bonds. And we remind you: He is talking about a man who has played exactly 66 major-league games.

For some 22-year-olds, that size boulder on their shoulder might feel as if it weighs more than Mount Kilimanjaro. But this isn't your average 22-year-old. He may feel the buzz, but he hasn't been swallowed by it.


"I try not to think about it," Dunn says. "It's one of those things you can't really avoid. But there are two ways to look at it. You can look at it as bad, as a negative pressure. Or you can look at it as a positive. And that's how I try to look at it. I try to look at it as positive pressure. It's not a bad thing. It means people expect things out of me. And I like that."


There isn't much Dunn doesn't have going for him. Start with size: at 6-foot-6, 240 pounds, with biceps the size of an SUV, he makes Mark McGwire look like Rafael Furcal. ("He's huge," says Phillies outfielder Doug Glanville. "His arms are so big, I bet a couple of times on his follow-through, he's hit the right fielder in the face.")


Next, let's move along to selectivity. Dunn comes from a high school (New Caney, Texas, HS) where his coach was a Billy Beane-esque take-a-walk fanatic. So two straight seasons now, Dunn has walked 100 times. In his four professional seasons, he has never had an on-base percentage under .400. How many 22-year-olds can say that?


But Adam Dunn has something going for him beyond the basics -- size and strength, discipline and athleticism. And everyone who has ever been around him talks about it.



"He's amazing," says Rijo. "Not for his talent. For his attitude. He's always smiling. He doesn't have a bad day. Every day's the same for him, and that's something you don't see in a young player. Some guys get a big head when they're that good. This guy is real."


"He's so down-to-earth," says Reds closer Danny Graves. "There's not one ounce of prima dona in him."


"He's so refreshing, he reminds you of guys from another era," says Reds coach Ray Knight. "He's just got a special joy about playing."


Maybe that's because Dunn almost didn't play baseball at all. Only four years ago, he had a football scholarship to play quarterback at Texas. So as the baseball draft approached, he let those scouting directors know football was the path he had in mind.


But Reds scout Johnny Almaraz developed enough rapport with Dunn to know that somewhere inside that quarterback's body, there was the heart of a baseball player. So the Reds took a shot and drafted him in the second round.


By the time spring practice rolled around, the Texas coaches were talking about moving Dunn to tight end. Little did they know that was a decision that would produce not the next Kellen Winslow but the next Larry Walker.


Dunn was so upset about that tight-end talk, he asked his agent to contact the Reds. And a baseball star was about to be born.


"I knew eventually I'd have to give up one or the other," Dunn says. "I didn't know at the time which one. Now I'm just glad everything worked out like it did."


One reason it has worked out is that Dunn has attacked baseball with a football player's fury, but also with a baseball player's staying power. The biggest obstacle most football players never get over when they try baseball is adjusting from a one-day-a-week sport to a seven-day-a-week sport. For Dunn, that has never been a problem.


"Deion Sanders -- and I love him -- was a football player playing baseball," Bowden says. "Bo Jackson was a football player playing baseball. Adam Dunn was a baseball player playing football. He has the instincts for the game, and he loves the day-to-day grind. He's a 162-game guy. He's not a once-a-week guy."


"They're two different sports," Dunn says. "They're two different emotions. If you get all jacked up to play baseball, you just end up trying to do too much. Baseball's all about staying on an even keel. It's not about gearing up to play 12 or 14 or 16 games. In baseball, we've got 162 of those babies."


And who knows what we might get to see when Adam Dunn plays 162 of those babies in the big leagues for the first time? It's a scary thought -- for the pitchers.


"When he walks up there, he's got a presence," says Phillies pitcher Brandon Duckworth. "He's not like, 'Ho-hum, I'm in the box.' He's got total focus, like he's ready to take your head off. And it seems like every time got a hit, it went out of the park. I know I jammed him a couple of times, and he still flew out to the warning track. I watched that and went, 'Whoah.' I have nightmares about that guy sometimes."


With reason. Just the two months Dunn spent in the major leagues last year produced a prime-time highlight reel.


Who gets intentionally walked in their first game in the big leagues? Adam Dunn did -- by the Marlins.


Dunn, who bats left-handed, shrugs that off as just a left-left, right-right maneuver. ("It didn't matter who was up," he says.) But Rijo laughs at that modesty.


"Sometimes, minor-league numbers don't count," Rijo says. "His numbers -- they count. They knew."


But there was more. There was the 425-foot home run Dunn hit in his first game ever in Cincinnati. There were the home runs he hit in eight straight series in his first month in the major leagues. There were the 12 home runs he hit in his first full calendar month, August -- most by any NL rookie in any month in the history of the league.

And there was the Oct. 2 space shot Dunn launched off the Cubs' Kyle Farnsworth. It was last seen heading for a rooftop across the street from Wrigley Field.


"I think that one," Graves speculated, "landed on a balcony, in somebody's club sandwich."

And, finally, there was NFL Films' favorite Adam Dunn highlight -- the Jerome Bettis thumping he put on Padres catcher Wiki Gonzalez to win an Aug. 5 collision at the plate.


"You know, he talks a lot in here about his football career," Graves chuckles, "about how awesome he was in high school. We were always giving him crap about it -- until he took out Wiki Gonzalez. After that, we couldn't give him crap about that anymore."


Just about everyone in Cincinnati has an Adam Dunn moment in their memory banks -- everyone, that is, but Dunn. He's too busy looking ahead at all the stuff he wants to do better to start looking back on all the stuff he's already done.


"The way I look at it, I don't have to duplicate last year," Dunn says. "I know that was one of those years that doesn't happen very often. I'm realistic about that. But I'm not going to be satisfied to hit .200, with five homers, either. I know I need to do better than that."


So he's working these days on becoming "the perfect player," Knight says. It isn't his goal to become Babe Ruth. It's his goal, Dunn says, to become Larry Walker -- "because he does it all."


And to become Larry Walker, Dunn figures he needs to get better at just about everything -- defense, baserunning, contact, consistency. "I could sit here all day and tell you everything I need to work on," he says. "And I know it will take time."


The Reds will wait for this guy to tie the whole package together, because there's no package like it anywhere.


"Just because we talk about him hitting 40 or 50 or 60 homers doesn't mean that this year, we wouldn't be shocked if he only hit 20," Bowden says, "and then the next year bounce right back to 40, 50, 60. There are always adjustments for young players, and the league adjusts to them.

"But when we talk about him in the same breath as the Sosas or the Bonds or the Griffeys, I don't think it's a stretch to project that some day, his name will belong with all of them."


If a general manager said that about any other 22-year-old, the most polite word you would think of is "hype." When this general manager says it about this 22-year-old, the word we think of is, "absolutely."


See ya in 10 years.

 

We will see how Dunn makes adjustments, because Major League pitching is a lot better than minor league pitching. A couple of times around the league and pitchers will find his weaknesses, he will have to adjust, or he will be just another phenom who turns out to be an average outfielder.

 

He won't be doing that much damage. The bases will be empty after Griffey homers. good luck tho.

 

And the gaunlet has been thrown down.

Griffey will be watching from the bench, yelling "come on Adam, pick me up!"

And I'm winning our basketball match this week too, Phi.

 

I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear outfielders being discussed.

Maybe I should introduce you to the THREE MVP Candidates I have starting. . . .

I scoff at your Adam Dunn's and your Ken Griffey jrs.

 

Shirley you don't mean J.D. Drew as an MVP candidate? He took himself out of a game the other day because he got a pain (arm or leg, don't remember). He just walked off the field in the middle of a game!!!! Larussa and the rest of the Cardinals just stared at him as he came into the dugout. Dude gets a hangnail and sits for a week. Low threshold of pain.

As for outfielders, how bout Walker, Gonzalez, Burrell and Wilson??? None better (in our league anyway)

 

Dudes.. Everyone knows that my outfield kicks superior @ss.

Manny Ramirez, Bernie Williams, Johnny Damon and Darin Erstad.

You wish you had my outfield.

 

fade what do you want from me for delgado?

 

Guerrero, Jones, Alou, Jenkins or Cedeno certainly on par with any outfield in this league.

What

 

Green - Power
Ichiro - Speed
Griffey- Power and Speed

I don't mind being the best outfield, but at least give me some competition. It's getting lonely at the top.